Special Service and Features
Atal Innovation Rankings: IIT Madras is the Most Innovative Educational Institute in India The Institute has been adjudged #1 in ARIIA Rankings for the Third Consecutive Year in the Government of India’s Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements  announced today
Indian Institute of Technology Madras has been recognized as the Most Innovative Educational Institute in India for the Third Consecutive Year. It has been Ranked #1 in the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements  launched by the Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
IIT Madras is in the ‘CFTIs /Central University/Institute of National Importance ’ category.
As many as 1,438 Higher Education Institutions   participated in the Third Edition of ARIIA Rankings as compared to 674 HEIs during last year. This Third Edition of ARIIA has a special framework for non-technical institutions which will further strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in our education institutions.
Dr. Subhas Sarkar, Hon’ble Minister of State for Education, Government of India, announced the results today  in the presence of Mr. Rakesh Ranjan, Additional Secretary , Ministry of Education, Government of India, Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education , Dr. M.P. Poonia, Vice Chairman, AICTE, Prof. Rajive Kumar, Member Secretary, AICTE, and Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, Innovation Cell, Ministry of Education, Government of India, among others.
The announcement can be viewed at the following link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm7ZyQGo_i4
Congratulating all the top performers in various ARIIA Ranking categories, Dr. Subhas Sarkar, Hon’ble Minister of State for Education, Government of India, said, “We need to give a huge push to innovation and entrepreneurship within our educational institutions and ARIIA is one major initiative in that direction. The ARIIA Ranking will prepare our Higher Educational Institutions to position themselves in major international educational rankings and I would like to see ARIIA Rankings go global as innovation and entrepreneurship has become an integral part of education system across the globe.”
Further, Dr. Subhas Sarkar said, “Innovation and entrepreneurship in the campuses should be linked to commercialisation and technology transfers. More than quantity, the Institute should focus on the quality of innovations and research. This will help us to achieve the AtmaNirbhar Bharat in true sense.”
“I appreciate the efforts of all the other Institutions and request them to continue following this path of innovation and entrepreneurship promotion so that all our educational institutions eventually emerge as hot beds of great, world-class ideas. Your participation in ARIIA Rankings highlights the seriousness you assign to innovation and entrepreneurship. I am glad to see such amazing participation,”Dr. Subhas Sarkar added.
ARIIA endeavours to systematically rank education institutions and universities primarily on innovation-related indicators. It aims to inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mind-set and build ecosystems to encourage high-quality research, innovation and entrepreneurship. More than quantity, ARIIA focuses on the quality of innovations and measures the real impact created by these innovations nationally and internationally.
Speaking about this recognition being accorded to the Institute, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, said, “We are delighted to be adjudged the Most Innovative Institute for the third time in a row since inception of the Atal Rankings on Innovation. IIT Madras places a lot of emphasis on innovations among its students and faculty, which has resulted in a very successful and fast-growing deep technology startup ecosystem in the country.”
IIT Madras has an ecosystem that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship at multiple levels. These include:
- Nirmaan, a pre-incubator to nurture student ideas mature towards incubation. Some of the startups that came from Nirmaan have been successfully incubated and raised over USD 1 Million
- IIT Madras Incubation Cell , India’s leading deep-tech startup incubator that has incubated more than 240 Startups that have a combined valuation of US$ 1.5 Billion and created more than 5,200 Jobs
- IIT Madras Research Park, which works with more than 75 R&D Clients, hosts Eight Centers of Excellence and Five Incubators besides engaging more than 3,000 professionals in its 1.2 million Sq.Ft of Workspace
- Gopalakrishnan Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which builds capacity in researchers to maximise the impact of deep-tech research through scalable start-ups
The IITMIC houses incubators such as Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre , Rural Technology and Business Incubator  and Bio-Tech incubators. The IITMIC-Incubated startups are in sectors such as Manufacturing, IoT, energy/renewables, healthcare/ medical devices, water, edu-tech/skill development, agri-tech, robotics, AI, ML and, data analytics, among others.
The Centre For Innovation at IIT Madras is a student body that has augmented the ‘tech’ space in the institute wherein their projects have gone on to produce high-profile start-ups and internationally acclaimed competition teams. ‘Nirmaan’ seeks out students with ideas that have commercial potential and puts them through a one-year pre-incubator programme.
ARIIA 2021 has rankings for six categories of institutions, namely:
- CFTIs  /Central University/Institute of National Importance 
- State University and Deemed University 
- GovtColleage/Institution 
- University & Deemed University 
- Private collage/Institute 
- Institute of National Importance, Central University and CFIs 
- General 
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